Tuesday, April 10, 2012

04/10/2012
Outside of the monoliths, Liberal Party (LP) and Nacionalista Party
(NP), few other political parties had made a lasting impression in terms
of fielding reliable bets for the periodic polls and those political
groups that mount a challenge against such parties were parties usually
formed by the incumbent.

Thus, it was the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan
(KBL) for former President Ferdinand Marcos for a long time. Cory Aquino
won under the banner of the United Democratic Opposition (Unido)
coalition which she quickly dropped after she made use of the Unido
vehicle and allied herself with the Laban ng Democratiko Pilipino, which
she also dropped when she endorsed Fidel Ramos, who came to power
through the Lakas-Kampi-CMD. Joseph Estrada has his own Partido ng
Masang Pilipino (PMP) when he overwhelmingly won the presidency in the
1998 elections.

Now, the tables are turned as a non-incumbent
formed a coalition outside of the two giant parties and is now expected
to pose a challenge to the dominant LP..... MORE

04/10/2012
The Lenten break still wasn’t over, but there went the prosecution
team and its spokesmen already firing their guns again at the Chief
Justice and his defense team, claiming that they have been
reinvigorated, are more focused and driven to prove their case against
the chief magistrate, Renato Corona.

Say what? Prove its case
against the CJ? But the prosecution has already rested its case long
before the Senate took a six-week recess. It is now the defense’s turn
to disprove the charges leveled against its client.

But the prosecution appears to think that it is its psy-war tactics and trial by publicity that will make its case win..... MORE

Iran has slammed world powers for imposing preconditions ahead of
Saturday’s nuclear talks. The foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi,
stressed on Monday that “setting conditions before the meeting means
drawing conclusions before negotiations.”

­"None of the parties will accept conditions set before the talks," Iran’s PressTV quoted Ali Akbar Salehi as saying, adding that Salehi branded the demands as “completely meaningless.”

The
US insists that Tehran should suspend uranium enrichment, which they
consider just a few steps from weapons grade, according to leaked
reports. Washington also wants Iran to close its underground nuclear
facility at Fordo near the holy city of Qom..... MORESource: RT.com

Thousands of US soldiers are going into battle fueled by all sorts of
prescription medications, be they amphetamines, antidepressants,
sedatives or others. Largely unmonitored consumption of drugs can lead
to aberrant behavior and mental disorders.

­Over 110,000 American service personnel took prescribed medications in 2011 to battle through everyday military routine.

The
Times recently disclosed that nearly 8 per cent of active-duty American
servicemen and women take sedatives and over 6 per cent are on
antidepressants, a tremendous eightfold increase since 2005, when two
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were in full swing..... MORE

04/10/2012
Ever since independence in 1946, Philippine economic policy has been
dictated by foreigners. First — and as a condition of that so-called
“independence” — the USA called the tune, to the extent of stationing
“advisers” in government departments. The aim, of course, was to ensure
that formal independence would not endanger US economic interests; or,
as US Sen. Millard Tydings bluntly described the purpose of the Bell
Trade Act, to “keep the Philippines economically though we lose them
politically.”

Those US interests, by the way, have evolved over
time, and it is interesting in this regard to compare the National
Security Council’s “Statement of Policy” toward the Philippines of April
5, 1954, with that of June 4, 1958.

While the 1954 policy stated
that the Philippines was “important to the United States and the free
world” due to its strategic location, its role as a model for other
Asians, and because “it is our principal source of copra and hemp, and
an important source of sugar and chrome,” the 1958 document reversed the
priority of the first two points and amended the third to read that
“the Philippines is one of the most important areas of US commercial
activity in Asia, both as a market and as a field of investment.” Thus,
by the late 1950s US capital had moved from seeing the Philippines as a
source of raw materials to viewing it as a destination for capital..... MORE

04/10/2012
I was 11 years old on April 9, 1942, when this was broadcast on radio:

“Bataan
has fallen. The Philippine-American troops on this war-ravaged and
bloodstained peninsula have laid down their arms. With heads bloody but
unbowed, they have yielded to the superior force and numbers of the
enemy.

“The world will long remember the epic struggle that
Filipino and American soldiers put up in the jungle fastness and along
the rugged coast of Bataan. They have stood up uncomplaining under the
constant and grueling fire of the enemy for more than three months.
Besieged on land and blockaded by sea, cut off from all sources of help
in the Philippines and in America, the intrepid fighters have done all
that human endurance could bear..... MORE

President
Aquino’s convening of the Mindanao Power Summit this Friday will only
be for show as agreements to jack up power rates in Mindanao and put up
environmentally-hazardous coal plants were already sealed during a
pre-summit meeting organized by the Department of Energy last week,
Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño said.

Casiño aired his apprehension
upon learning that in an April 4 pre-summit meeting in Davao, Energy
Secretary Jose Rene Almendras ordered Mindanao electric cooperatives to
buy expensive power from privatized power barges at P14 kilowatt hour
(kWh), with government shouldering the P9 per kWh diesel cost.
Almendras also reportedly ordered local government officials to
immediately approve the environmental compliance certificates (ECCs) for
at least two new coal fired power plants in Mindanao..... MORE

04/10/2012
TONGCHANG-RI SPACE CENTER — North Korea’s long-range rocket is on its
launch platform, Agence France Presse reporters said, as the regime
again insisted it was to send a peaceful satellite and not a missile.

The
usually secretive North organized an unprecedented visit for foreign
reporters to Tongchang-ri space center in an effort to show its Unha-3
rocket is not a disguised ballistic missile, as claimed by the US and
its allies.

Communist North Korea says it will launch the
satellite for peaceful scientific research between April 12 and 16 to
mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.
His birthday was on April 15..... MORE

Liberal
Party (LP) stalwarts claim that it is not threatened by the formation
of an Erap-Binay coalition under the umbrella of United Nationalist
Alliance (UNA), but three other Philippine political parties appear to
be interested in forging an alliance with UNA for the 2013 elections.

The
political parties reportedly interested in an alliance with UNA are the
Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), the Nacionalista Party (NP) and
the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP).

The LP, for its part,
has stated that at this time, the dominant political party is not
interested in forming coalitions with other parties, but could do so, as
long as these parties interested in forging an alliance with the LP,
would follow its “reform agenda,” with LP stalwart Florencio “Butch”
Abad saying that the LP can go it alone in 2013..... MORE

The
Court of Appeals (CA) has ruled against the suit of former Nayong
Pilipino executive director Charito Planas seeking to stop to the
implementation of President Aquino’s Executive Order 2 on her supposed
midnight appointment in 2010.

In a six-page resolution promulgated
last March 16, the 12th division of the appellate court denied her
motion seeking the issuance of a status quo ante order against EO 2 that
had been rendered moot and academic by the expiration of her term last
March 9.

The CA will still rule on the merits of the petition and resolve legal questions raised by the former official against EO 2..... MORE

A
series of raids conducted by combined military and police operatives to
rescue kidnapped Salug, Zamboanga del Norte Mayor Jeffrey Lim in some
parts of the Zamboanga region have yielded negative results, a ranking
military official said yesterday.

Army 1st Infantry Division (ID)
chief Brig. Gen. Rainier Cruz said at least four operations were
launched since Lim was abducted by unidentified armed men last April 2
in Poblacion, Salug.

“Negative so far,” said Cruz of the results of the series of raids staged by government troops..... MORE

Urban-poor
groups under the Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon (Alliance Against
Demolition) will launch today a campaign to gather one million
signatures for the repeal of the Urban Development and Housing Act
(UDHA) or Republic Act 7279.

In a statement, they said the
petition calls on the House of the Representatives to expedite the
passage of House Bill 5443 filed by Anakpawis party-list Rafael Mariano,
which repeals the UDHA which the poorest representative in the Lower
House claimed has paved the way for the massive demolition of urban-poor
communities nationwide in favor of the capitalists.

Alyansa
Kontra Demolisyon, an assemblage of not less than 80 urban-poor groups
mostly based in Metro Manila, had also filed a case asking the Supreme
Court (SC) to declare some anti-poor provisions in the UDHA as
unconstitutional..... MORE